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Congregamini et Audite
General Jack O’neill stands with his hands in his pockets, rocking back and forth on the balls of his feet and looking very much as though he doesn’t quite know what to do with himself. There is nobody to witness his obvious discomfort; the room is empty save for him and the dying man, whose eyes are closed. Then Jacob turns his head and his eyelids drift open, and Jack feels as if those dark, inscrutable eyes are pinning him to the wall.
‘I’m really not cut out for this sort of thing,’ says Jack, because he really can’t think of anything better.
The To’kra gives him a wan smile. At times like these, they’re both men of few words. ‘’Sokay, Jack,’ he says, hoarse and weary. ‘Don’t need to talk. Just listen.’ With a weak hand he motions for the younger General to approach. If the look in his eyes is anything to go by, Jack figures he doesn’t particularly want to hear whatever his companion has to say, but the man is dying, so he pulls up a chair and leans forward.
‘I need a favor, Jack.’
‘Name it.’
Jacob pauses for a moment. ‘Take care of her for me.’
A pretty reasonable request, though it almost feels like an insult . Then again, Jack’s always been good at keeping a lid on things, so he hardly has any right to be sanctimonious about it now.
‘Always.’
Jacob nods and goes silent for a while, and Jack optimistically wonders whether he’s off the hook already; but then the old man looks contemplatively at the ceiling and lets out a ragged sigh, and Jack knows there’s more. Nothing at first - he’s either collecting his thoughts or fighting off weariness.
‘I never did,’ he says eventually. ‘I was a lousy father. Never there…when she needed me. How she turned out the way she did, I’ll never know.’
The corner of Jack’s mouth tilts up into a smile. ‘It’s Carter,’ he answers with no small amount of pride. ‘She’s always the exception.’
‘Yeah, she is.’ Jacob falls silent again, and this time Jack really thinks it might be over, but he’s pretty sure that this is their last conversation and he doesn’t want to cut it off, so he doesn’t move.
‘You remember the attack on the Alpha site - the time she got chased by the Kull?’
Jack nods. ‘Yeah, I remember.’ He doesn’t think he’s ever likely to forget.
‘She didn’t know I gave up…coffee.’
‘What?’
Jack wonders for a moment whether the old man is, as they say, three fries short of a Happy Meal. Then he imagines himself on his deathbed and wonders if he’d start telling stories that didn’t go anywhere just to screw with everybody. Then he remembers he’s going to die alone.
‘She didn’t know I gave up coffee,’ Jacob repeats. ‘Selmak doesn’t like it. I gave it up. She said she didn’t know. You know what I said?’
‘No.’
‘ We never talk any more, Sam. That’s what I told her. Then when you got her back and she was lying on the infirmary bed with gashes all over her face…I told her I had to go. Told her I’d come back eventually. I never did.’
Well, yeah, that sucked. As far as he can remember, Jack has never gone far from the base when Carter was injured. Daniel, sure; and Teal’c - well, he could hardly recall Teal’c ever taking a day’s sick leave in his life - but not Carter. If Jack was being completely honest, he’d agree that maybe it wouldn’t have been such a bad thing for Jacob to stick around a little longer on that occasion.
‘She’s a soldier, Jacob,’ he says instead. ‘She understood.’
‘Yeah, she understood,’ Jacob agrees, sounding still wearier than before. ‘She was used to it. But I saw the tears in her eyes. I got a second chance and I still wasted all my time with her. Now she’s crying for me again. I don’t deserve it, but there’s nothing I can do. It’s a lousy way to die.’
Jack cocks his head. ‘Don’t be so hard on yourself,’ he offers. ‘We’ve all got regrets.’
‘Some more than others, Jack. Her mom didn’t have any…when she died. ‘Cept maybe choosing me.’
Carter never talks about her mother, just like Jack never talks about…that sort of thing. Jack doesn’t know what her name was. But he thinks he has a pretty good idea of what she must have been like, because there are certain things that Carter obviously didn’t inherit from Jacob. The eyes. The hair. The smile.
‘About the only thing I ever gave Sam was the name…Carter. It’s a good name, don’t you think?’
‘Yeah,’ Jack readily agrees. As a matter of fact, he’s pretty sure it’s his favorite.
‘I figured. You say it a lot. You always call her that. Never Sam. Just Carter.’
Jack shrugs, wondering again whether the To’kra is still in full possession of his faculties. ‘It is a good name.’
‘A couple months from now…It’ll be Shanahan.’
The words hit Jack like a ton of bricks. If the circumstances had been any different, he might have got up and walked away right there. No shit, he wants to say, but nobody said you have to rub it in my face.
‘Yeah,’ he says instead, because it’s a simple statement of fact that can’t be disputed, and Jacob Carter is an insensitive man at the best of times.
‘Say it.’
Jack frowns and leans forward. ‘What?’
‘Sam Shanahan.’
That one hits like a ton of bricks on the back of a freight train. Reflexively Jack’s frown turns into a mask, though he can feel his jaw clenching tight, and his right hand closes like a vice above his knee because he doesn’t think Carter would forgive him for punching her father on his deathbed. Jack has never been much of a diplomat, but he knows that somewhere out there, there’s a line between blunt and cruel, and Jacob Carter just crossed it.
‘Are we going somewhere with this, Jacob?’ His voice is even, but this time he doesn’t try too hard to sound polite.
The Tok’ra inhales a raspy breath, only to repeat the same two words; ‘Say it.’
‘I don’t-’
‘What’s the matter? ‘’S just a name.’
It’s a petty taunt, but technically true; and since it would be downright cowardly to walk away at this point, Jack relents under his breath; ‘Sam Shanahan.’ The words taste like acid.
Jacob gives a small nod, apparently satisfied. Slowly, he turns back to face Jack, and this time there’s a different look in his eyes - a little pity, maybe.
‘Good,’ he rasps. ‘Now you don’t have to say it again, for a couple more months. But if I were you…I’d get some practice in. Cause in a couple months you’re gonna be calling her that every day for the rest of her life.’
Jack feels a wave of nausea rise up out of his gut. Jacob’s taunting him now, rubbing salt in the wound, and for the first time in about nine years Jack O’neill thinks the words, I don’t deserve this.
But in spite of it all, he still knows how to keep his lid on. He can’t help his jaw twitching, can’t stop his nails from digging into his thigh, but nevertheless he swallows the bile and manages to answer in the same even tone as before.
‘I think she’ll always be Carter to me.’
Jacob scoffs and the exhalation turns into a cough. ‘To hell with that, Jack,’ he says, and now he sounds about as angry as Jack feels. ‘You’ve got no right. You don’t get to sit back and let it happen and still call her Carter at the end of it. She’s either gonna be Sam Shanahan or she’s not.’
‘How the hell did I get to be the bad guy in all of this?’ Jack hadn’t meant to raise his voice - but now the words are out of his mouth he isn’t going to take them back, either. Jacob doesn’t answer - just stares at him, and his eyes may as well be flashing for all the intensity in them, except Selmak’s gone and that piercing, withering gaze is all human. Inevitably, Jack loses the contest and looks away to the door, but there’s no Carter or any other form of rescue in sight. He lets out a defeated sigh and runs his hand through his hair, and much to his own chagrin he finds that the hand is shaking slightly - not enough for anyone to see, but enough for him to feel.
‘Look, what do you want from me, Jacob? It’s her choice.’
The Tok’ra shakes his head slowly, almost imperceptibly. ‘She didn’t have a choice, Jack. All her life, the best she ever got was me and that asshole Hanson. It wasn’t right. Shanahan made her an offer. She never got a better one.’
Well, when you put it like that, now he does sound like the bad guy. For what - for letting her marry the man she chose? How does that work?
Jack exhales again and leans back in his chair, looking to the ceiling for inspiration, but they’re in the infirmary and the ceiling is blank. What were his reasons, again? For a moment he isn’t even sure. He closes his eyes and there it is - the crux of the issue.
‘You know she deserves better, Jacob.’
‘Yeah,’ Jacob agrees immediately. ‘Better than me. Better than you. Better than him.’
Once again, Jack can hardly argue the point - it’s self - evident. He’s been resigned to Shanahan for a long time now, but he certainly isn’t going to defend the guy - or Jacob, or himself. He starts to wonder what they were actually arguing about in the first place. But Jacob’s still looking at him as if there’s an argument on, and it somehow feels like he’s losing.
‘She deserves to have whatever she wants, Jack. Believe me, life’s too short for anything…less.’
Jack has no answer to that.
Again the infirmary is silent for a long while save for the interminable beeping of Jacob’s monitor, counting down the seconds. He’s obviously struggling to stay awake but unwilling to give in, and Jack is too lost in his own thoughts to defend his own position any longer.
‘You know,’ Jacob eventually croaks, ‘when I first met you I thought you were taking advantage of her.’
Hot anger rises up again, but Jack forces it down - hell, everyone on the base probably thought the same thing.
‘I would never.’
‘I wish you had, Jack. What you did is worse. You broke her heart without ever laying a hand on her.’
Jack puts his head in his hands, because otherwise he might start tearing his hair out, or strangle Jacob, or strangle himself. It’s too much. The rational part of his brain knows it was for the best - knows that she needs and deserves more than he can ever give her. But now Jacob and the beeping of the monitor and the footsteps in the corridor all fade into the background, and all he can see is the look on her face when she woke up in this very room a year ago and the first word out of her mouth had been his name, and he’d answered ‘excuse me?’ Blank - uncomprehending - so surprised by the sudden betrayal that she must have thought she’d misheard him; wondering, no doubt, how she had somehow failed to get on a first - name basis with her CO after seven years of saving his ass. The way she’d closed her eyes to hide the hurt in them; the way she’d apologized .
And you didn’t even do it for her, says an unpleasant little voice in his head which sounds suspiciously like Jacob and seldom ever lies. You did it for yourself.
‘Sir, is everything okay?’
Impeccable timing, as always - and as if he wasn’t already feeling guilty enough, now she’s full of concern for him.
‘Fine, Carter,’ he says, turning to her and somehow managing to show her a smile. ‘Long day.’
‘You should get some rest, sir,’ she says with a veiled tenderness which he has done absolutely nothing to deserve. ‘They’ll wake you up if there’s any news.’
‘May as well while you still can, Jack,’ Jacob agrees - his voice quieter than ever, but his eyes just the same. ‘You don’t have much time.’
‘I’ll go check in with Walter,’ Jack replies, because he knows he can face Jacob’s gaze all day if he has to, but not his daughter’s. ‘Call me if you need anything,’ he says with a light touch on her shoulder, and then he’s out of there before he has a chance to break.
He doesn’t know if he’ll actually sleep. He doesn’t want to leave her alone, but he’ll have to rest eventually, and Jacob’s a stubborn old bastard - nobody knows exactly how long he’ll last out. He doesn’t know what he’ll do when the old man’s dead, either - whether he should send her home so she can grieve in private, or keep her in the mountain so she doesn’t have to. He knows she won’t want anyone to see her cry - least of all him. More than anything, he wishes Daniel would show up already, because he’s so much better at this sort of thing, and he’d know what to do. With another pang of nausea, he wonders whether he ought to call Shanahan - no doubt Carter wouldn’t want him to see her go to pieces either, but that’s his job. Then he remembers she’s having second thoughts about marrying the guy, and he isn’t sure of anything any more.
‘Anything to report, Walter?’ A pointless question, really. If there was anything to report, Walter would have reported it already.
‘Nothing, sir.’
Jack enters his office and sags into his chair. He rests his hand on his chin and fiddles with a pen, wondering how his life ever got to be so damn complicated. He has only been in there about five minutes when Kerry Johnson walks through the door, and he knows it’s game over before she even opens her mouth.